Pages - Menu

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Talking about life vs. living life.

Is it better to talk about your life and share the little tidbits of that life with others, or is it better to cultivate your life, to develop yourself as a person and actually live your life? That is the dilemma we face every day when deciding whether we should be glued to (a)social networking, discussing our lives and interests with others, or if we should be moving towards our goals, engaged in actually better ourselves and the world around us. The latter usually does not involve (a)social networking, because being (a)social networking has little to do with improving one's self and one's abilities.

Recently someone close to me had me look at their Pinterest account. In case you don't know, Pinterest is a site where one can share their interests and pictures that they like to the rest of the world. For some reason it is more popular with females than males (I could not really find a justifiable reason for this). That being said, I enjoyed looking at my friend's Pinterest and for a few seconds I may have even thought about setting my own Pinterest up.

But then I realized I would not. Why you ask? Well, first, I realized that I don't need to share my interests to the rest of the world. I have found that there are either two things I can do. I can talk about something, such as my interest, or I can spend my time actually improving my abilities and cultivating that interest. In the time it would have taken me to set up a Pinterest account, I could have spent time engaged in my own endeavors.

Recently I have thought somewhat about going back to Facebook. I won't lie. Sometimes the draw of returning to the site seems substantial. But then I remind myself of just how much my life stagnated while I was a member of Facebook. I recently got this comment on my blog:

All of the above comments are from people who don't have a life
interesting enough to share.... pure lames, haters. My advise is to stop
hating on facebook and get a life. obviously your probably Ugly,
Anoying, and plain uninteresting so you blame Facebook because people
who like there lives are proud enough to share with the people they
love and who love them. So PLEASE get a life and stop hating on
Facebook!!!

I think that it's interesting how this person has began by coming up with a bunch of conclusions about who I am. He/she states that "obviously" I'm probably "Ugly", "Anoying" and plain uninteresting. How does this person know that? I did not leave Facebook due to my looks or how interesting I think I am. Further, right before I left I was told by two separate people that the only reason they were on Facebook was because of me and another individual. In fact, many people enjoyed me being on the site and were probably perplexed when I left. The real reason I left was because I saw that my life had started to stagnate. I saw that I wanted to be more than just a person who sat around on an (a)social networking all day long. I realized that in order for me to get the most out of my life, as well as maximize my close relationships with others, an exodus from Facebook was in order. I realized that Facebook provided me with no real benefits in life. In fact, I was really getting nothing at all out of Facebook. Further, I saw that many friends and family members of mine were literally wasting hours upon hours every single day on that site. I don't mean just checking it, but obsessing over it. I noticed that people around me, at school, and on the streets were obsessive about checking their accounts. I realized that to leave the site and go back to living a life without Facebook would make me better able to achieve my goals. It was partly an experiment, but one that I immediately saw results from.

I never felt like I was inferior to anyone else on Facebook. To be honest, of everyone on my friends list I was more educated, had traveled far more extensively, lived in some of the finest cities in the country, and have accomplished a great variety of my life goals. This does not mean that I felt superior to others. In fact, I don't like to think that people are inferior or superior to each other. We all have faults and talents that make us unique. Further, everyone rises and falls and pride never can last forever. I found that I had no want to brag about the things I had done, nor did I like that the site makes people feel compelled to be narcissistic. I would often not share my travels or attainments out of not wanting to make others who are unemployed or struggling to feel bad. In short, I had absolutely no place on Facebook.

The author of the above comment obviously can not seem to understand that not all people leave Facebook because they feel "ugly" or "inferior" to others. Further, I venture to guess that the author of the comment above has a serious inferiority complex. Many people who "have lives" are not on Facebook and have no use for the site. Many of the world's senior citizens, many of whom are very talented and educated individuals who have a lifetime of knowledge and wisdom have absolutely no need whatsoever for Facebook. Do you think that many of today's biggest creators and inventors spend hours a day on Facebook? If you think that being on Facebook means that you have a life, you are completely wrong. The reality is: Being on Facebook means the opposite, that you probably don't have as much of a life as you want. Either you can talk about your life or you can actually go out and live it. Which do you think that many people on Facebook are busy doing?

3 comments:

I am glad to see that you are back. The comment that you mentioned was probably left by the author of "AdultSocialSkills." His way of calling people who don't like Facebook names is apparent in the post. I think that, being an author of an ebook, he would be more careful about spelling errors. That, or your posts really got to him.

Being on Facebook is "a personal choice", it has nothing to do with what a person looks like, or what kind of a life they lead.If you are "sitting around" looking at Facebook you truly are not fully experiencing the life you're living right now.Be glad it's not "mandatory by law" to have a Facebook profile and you have a choice whether you want to be on there, or not.It's funny how so many people use the label "ugly" to make their point, it's like the elementary school playground all over again.

When people diss others who are permanently off facebook are just jealous. They don't have the will power to walk away and they know it and feel guilty about it. People who down others do so to make themselves feel good and to justify their errors. Being on FB is a personal choice. If you don't want to be on it, nothing wrong with that. I for one have been FB-free (deleted, not deactivated) for a week not and I feel renewed!